investigation the laser acupuncture effect on the nocturia,urinary urgency and quality of life in patients with overactive bladder syndrome

introduction: overactive bladder syndrome is characterized by urinary urgency with incontinence urgency, urinary frequency, and nocturia. overactive bladder effects on the quality of life (qol). the prevalence of this disease in the world is estimated from 16% to 17% and it is more common among the women. different treatment methods are suggested to control overactive bladder such as medicine, physiotherapy, behavior therapy, and surgery. laser acupuncture (la) is a kind of invasive treatment method in which we used low power laser instead of needle on acupuncture points. material and methods: in this interventional study, we enrolled 50 female patients with age range of 30-60 that were suffering from overactive bladder. 25 cases randomly were selected and received la and other 25 cases received placebo laser. study parameters based on 36-item short form health survey included the number of nocturia, frequency, urinary incontinence and the level of their effect on the life. the treatment duration was 9 weeks and the sessions were twice a week. descriptive statistics of the variable has been showed as mean ± standard deviation. statistical analysis was performed by comparing the mean of  variables in two groups and along with the weeks using two-way analysis of variance. generalized estimating equation (gee) analysis was utilized to assess the effect of laser acupuncture longitudinally during the 4 weeks. an identity link function was used in the gee analysis since the weekly number of records have been averaged using daily number of records for each variable. statistical software r version 3.1.3 was used, and the significance level of 0.05 was assumed for all the tests in this study. results: this study shaw la decrease the number of nocturia and urinary urgency significantly and improve qol in the study group. conclusion: our results confirmed effect of treatment of la on decreasing of urinary urgency and nocturia.